Author: Adela

Playing the piano soothes the soul.

Music has a unique effect on us and can be an effective stress-management tool. The physical act of playing an instrument, the cognitive functions involved in  learning a piece, and the auditory stimulation of hearing music can have a huge impact on our mental wellbeing and emotional health. Here’s why… 

Learning an instrument or a new piece of music requires a focussed mind, and a focussed mind is one that is not wandering and worrying about other stuff. A bit like meditation. A pianist has to concentrate really, really hard: concentrate on the score in front of them, on the keyboard, on what their hands are doing, on what their feet are doing if they’re using pedals. When parents come in to collect their child from a lesson they often tiptoe in and whisper because the level of focus and concentration in the room is almost palpable, and no one wants to break a spell like that!

Playing a piece well known, when the fingers remember what they’re supposed to be doing almost by themselves, can be wonderfully cathartic. Playing music allows us to indulge our emotions and moods and whatever we choose is an entirely personal choice. I remember as a child playing the same song over and over and over again when my Grandpa died, and I would cry when I played it (the piece itself had no relevance, but the music and the lyrics of the song hit a chord). Music can be a way for children (and adults) to express themselves somehow when they don’t know any other way of doing it. 

Certain types of music (particularly classical) can slow the heart rate, thereby lowering blood pressure and decreasing the levels of stress hormone in the body. And here’s something really amazing – studies show that the heartbeats of singers in a choir actually synchronise with each other whilst they’re singing! Imagine the effect of a sing-song round the piano!

So go ahead. Play the piano. Learn a new piece. Play an old piece. Indulge your emotions. Soothe your soul.

Sources: https://psychcentral.com/lib/the-power-of-music-to-reduce-stress/

https://www.the-scientist.com/the-nutshell/choir-singers-synchronize-heartbeats-39045

It’s been a cold, wet week! Having a little bumble boogie to warm up and hoping the sun and bees make an appearance this weekend…

As piano pieces get more complex so, of course, do the rhythms. Quavers, semi-quavers, dotted-notes and rests all start making appearances in pieces of music as students progress through the initial stages of learning the piano. I love using things that I have around the house to engage learners and help them understand what’s going on in music in different ways. Creating rhythms out of lego bricks can be really beneficial in understanding and working out how rhythms are put together according to the number of beats in a bar.

Visualising rhythm through colour, brick length, and shape, and physically building those rhythms with our own hands, can suddenly make sense of all the black dots and tails on a page. It’s a great way for kinaesthetic and visual learners (that is, learners who like to “do” and learners who learn through “seeing”) to grasp the way that rhythms are built up.

This week students have been working on their own compositions. We’ve had music about frogs, snowy nights and crackling fires. All utterly unique in their composition and totally brilliant in their performances.

Children are not constrained by rules when making music. They have no limits and their imaginations know no bounds. I love listening to their ideas, seeing their enthusiasm at the piano and applying their ideas and even getting them written down in some way.

Encouraging imagination, creativity and story-telling at the piano helps learners to understand the stories that other composers are telling through their music, and is a fantastic springboard for learning about and interpreting every aspect of music. 

Some great music to listen to that tells stories:

• Carnival of the Animals – Camille Saint-Saens
• Peter and the Wolf – Prokovief
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – Paul Dukas (or in fact anything from Disney’s Fantasia)

A 233 year old piano is returning to the UK for restoration after being taken to Australia on the First Fleet in 1788. It belonged to the ship’s surgeon of HMS Sirius, which carried almost 200 people, including sailors and their families. But why did the surgeon take his piano with him? Was it played on the ship as it made its 8 month journey to Australia? If so, what joy and comfort must its sound have brought to the passengers and crew of that ship as they journeyed to the unknown.

Music knows no boundaries and transports us across space and time to places we may (or may not) rather be, and the emotional response that music can stimulate in us is like nothing else on earth.

When I moved to Australia I took my piano with me too. A familiar piece of furniture in an unfamiliar place, playing music that’s reminiscent of people and places of home, and the reassurance of doing something with ease when your heart and body feels uneasy and homesick was a welcome break from navigating a new life in a new place, just as it must have been for the surgeon, with his piano, over 200 years ago.

We spend the baby and toddler years singing lullabies, winding the bobbin up, giving them saucepans to bang and tambourines to shake, and then suddenly it’s school time and the music-making grinds to a halt. Music always seems to be one of the first subjects to suffer when budgets are cut in education.

Giant floor stave! Love playing games on this with students and looking at music in an enormous and colourful way. The possibilities with it are endless and it’s great for student-led learning, getting us off the piano stool and moving around. We’ve danced on it, hopped and jumped on it, played rolling and throwing games on it, built “musical towers” with duplo on it and generally marvelled at it’s versatility and its ability to make a line of music look so exciting!